THIS IS THE REFLEX

Two lesser-known but super funky Bobby Thurston tracks get The Reflex Revision treatment, taking these down and dirty boogie album originals and exposing both the Go-Go soul and house roots buried in the mix. Prelude stalwarts Willie Lester, guitarist/songwriter Rodney Brown and engineer Bob Dawson had brought their Washington D.C. sound to the label’s biggest successes, including those of Gayle Adams (“Your Love is a Life Saver”) and Sharon Redd (“Can You Handle It.”) For these slightly grittier Bobby Thurston tracks, Lester and Brown’s band feel every one of their slower beats (102 BPM for “I Know You Feel Like I Feel” and a hypnotizing 78 BPM for “I Want Your Body.”) From 1981’s The Main Attraction, “I Know You Feel” seduces you with old school brass and a traditional structure; it practically begs you to find a dance partner. Isolating the vocals and backbeat, The Reflex makes Louie Oxley’s filthy Go-Go Moog bassline the star of his Revision. He also reveals Theodore “Sugarbear” Jones’s fabulous but hidden Chic-esque guitar riff. 1980’s “I Want Your Body” features a more radical Revision from The Reflex, starting by exposing the lush strings and brass and holding off the “drop” of the funky drummer until the final minute of the song, by which time the sexual tension has reached breaking point.

I Know You Feel Like I Feel (The Reflex Revision)

Bobby Thurston - I Know You Feel Like I Feel (The Reflex Revision)

Lights Out (The Reflex Revision)

Don't Go Making Plans EP

Don't Go Making Plans (The Reflex Revision)

Le Bal Masqué / La Nuit Des Requins

La Nuit Des Requins [The Reflex Revision] (Edit)

Le Bal Masqué [The Reflex Revision] (Edit)

Anomalocaris

OH LALA

The Best Of Cerrone Productions

Hooked on You (The Reflex Revision)

Midnight Magic: A nine person ensemble bonded by the unwavering desire to make you, the listener, and the rhythm become one; the secret love children of Donna Summer and George Clinton serving up an orgasmic feast of funk, disco, electro and soul.

Midnight Magic - Beam Me Up

Pasteur Lappe - Na Real Sekele Fo Ya

The Empire Strikes Back

Boogie

One Understanding

You Can't Change A Man

Punkin Machine's "I Need You Tonight”, originally released in 1981, is another typical example of an underground hit, played at many a flat party these days like an obvious, bona-fide early 80s discopop hit when it was actually quite obscure until James Murphy unearthed it on his FabricLive Mix in 2007. Produced by Jerry Cucuzzella, the track is a feel good bumping disco track, with punchy bass, spanky guitars and sassy vocals that make for an uplifting and energetic listen - a nice throwback to the heyday of Montreal disco

I Need You Tonight / Tonight - Single

Tonight

Suzy Q - Tonight

Soundway Records present ’24 Hours in A Disco 1978 - 82’, 7 cuts of relentless disco grooves from the sublimely gifted Kiki Gyan. Hailed as Africa’s answer to Stevie Wonder, Ghanaian multi-instrumentalist Kiki Gyan was a musical wunderkind who by 1975 had risen from the lowly status of high school dropout to being ranked eighth in a poll of the greatest keyboardists in the world (occupying the rarefied air of the top ten with heavyweights like Steve Winwood, Billy Preston, and Stevie Wonder) as well as becoming an in-demand session player in the top recording studios of London - all before his twenty-first birthday. 

Out on his own, he produced a series of highly ambitious disco records aimed at positioning him as an international star, but weighed down by the excesses of the era, Gyan saw his meteoric rise matched by an equally swift fall back into obscurity. 

Loved dearly by his contemporaries and sorely missed since his death in 2005 the story of the life of Kofi Kwarko ‘Kiki’ Gyan is one often told with warning by his friends to the new generation of aspiring Ghanaian popstars.

Soundway Records now collects the best of Gyan’s work as a frontman and solo artist, featuring an array of electrifying disco grooves that still sound contemporary (and in some cases futuristic) decades after their initial release.

Released on CD and 2xLP both formats are accompanied with detailed liner notes written by Uchenna Ikonne. LP version comes with a free MP3 download of the release. 

Kiki Gyan - Disco Dancer

El Niño

Hooked on You (The Reflex Revision)

Cerrone

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